I’m late to the ball here, but there have been an enormous amount of silly things written about redistribution in the past week or two. First, we have the claim that Barack Obama’s agenda is “socialist,” which is just sloppy. Words mean things, and “socialism” is about centralized economic planning and state control of the […]

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So, I want to caveat this post by saying this isn’t supposed to be any sort of argument for more vigorous intervention in health care. Beyond my general instinctive “gummint bad” caveman grunt, I have no very well thought out views on healthcare policy. (Funny how that works, isn’t it? Five years ago, I felt […]

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Market value of an unopened copy of the Rauschenberg limited edition LP of Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues: ~$200 Price I found it for on eBay: $75 Sliding off the cellophane and blasting “Burning Down the House”: Priceless

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While I can’t verify his identity for certain, a commenter at Radley Balko’s site claims to have some firsthand knowledge of how those bogus piracy stats came about: Nice article. The writer is closer than he knows about those numbers. How do I know? I wrote that 1988 ITC report. I was required to put […]

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I’m bemused at the way we’re perpetually told the fundamental cause of the ongoing meltdown is Wall Street “greed,” as though that somehow counted as an explanation. How, pray, would we describe it if mortgage lenders had rejected many more applications from lower-income folks, on the grounds that they were poor risks? Well, greed, of […]

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Just when Obama’s economic rhetoric is giving me hives, I see something like this and get, if not a thrill running up my leg, a little more at ease: But you know, the truth is that my education was a pretty standard, liberal arts education. So I was exposed to thinkers on the left. At […]

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So, DC conservatives are all (ahem) atwitter over #dontgo, a mobile social networking powered movement dedicated to attacking Congressional Democrats for adjourning without deploying their magical Congress-powers to “solve” the energy crisis. More specifically, the plan is apparently to make hay of the refusal to open up the continental shelf to offshore drilling, which is […]

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John McCain apparently had an awkward exchange with reporters today when one asked whether he thought it was fair that insurance often covers Viagra but not birth control pills. Obviously there’s a superficial symmetry, but I’d think the distinction is pretty elementary: Erectile disfunction is, in theory, a medical condition that will unpredictably strike some […]

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I was once, hard as this may be to believe, a much bigger geek.  Oh, sure, I can still kludge a little code, fake my way through cocktails at CFP, even chuckle at nine out of 10 xkcd jokes. But, say, 16 years ago, on a night like this, I’d be sitting at my desk […]

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David Boaz articulates a common libertarian pet peeve: In an article about the wave of conservative reform under Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, the New York Times writes: Meanwhile the House is considering an income tax cut that would cost the state $300 million. Another way to say that would be: Meanwhile the House is considering […]

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